


Don't believe me just watch

by Andwecanmessaround



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Mentions of alcohol, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, slightly OOC BC pearl gets cranky when she doesn't get her sleep and well...they're human teenagers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andwecanmessaround/pseuds/Andwecanmessaround
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Needless to say when the phrase ‘I’m too hot (hot damn!)’ had shown up on her wrist -parentheses and all - in a messy black scrawl, on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning shortly after her sixteenth birthday, the excitement had turned very quickly to confusion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sure, term had technically ended, and it was a Sunday morning, but Pearl didn’t think she was being unreasonable by wanting the flat above to stop blaring their music and banging around at 2am. The whole reason she’d decided to stay in halls over winter break was to get some peace and quiet, but judging by tonight she’d be lucky. She’d never met the elusive noisemakers from the flat above, but they’d been the bane of many a weekend this past term, though they at least restrained themselves a little more through the week. 

After trying a pillow over her head to little effect, another hour passed before Pearl finally sprang out of bed, pulling a hooded top over her pyjamas to suffer through the freezing corridors. Pearl had never experienced anything as cold as the corridors outside had become this month. Thanks to an energy consciousness drive by a group of students, the heating had been turned down to save power over Christmas break. Loudly flinging her bedroom and flat door open, she stamped up two flights of stairs before hammering ferociously on the door of flat 7. When they didn’t immediately respond, Pearl hummed and scratched the soulmate tattoo on her wrist. Damn thing always began to itch when Uptown Funk started playing. 

A soulmate tattoo usually depicted the first word, gesture or sentence a person’s soulmate would say when they first saw each other. They could come and go, fade or change at any time. Some people even had more than one. Pearl had always admired her mother’s, the dark green script of ‘you have beautiful eyes’ curling round her neck. Sadly her dad had passed long before she was born so she’d never seen the matching ‘you’re drunk’ up his back, but her mother always chuckled whenever she recounted the story of meeting him for the first time. Pearl had spent nearly all of the first two decades of her life wistfully waiting for an equally sweet tattoo. Needless to say when the phrase ‘I’m too hot (hot damn!)’ had shown up – parentheses and all – on her wrist in a messy black scrawl on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday morning shortly after her sixteenth birthday, the excitement had turned very quickly to confusion. 

Then last year Uptown Funk was released and the first time she heard it Pearl had been so excited, so sure that this was it and she’d find her soulmate soon. But no luck. Now she felt like the universe was mocking her every time she heard the song. Which was apparently so loud they couldn’t even hear her knocking, so Pearl decided to kick the bottom multiple times. Not like she was gonna damage it any more, it already bore the thick black scuffs and scratched indents that showed multiple boot-wearers had impatiently stood here before. 

The door window had been blacked out by nightclub promotional leaflets stuck on the inside of the glass, and many more littered the corridor floor around the door. Pearl even spotted a freshers week coupon that expired two months ago. Her face wrinkled in distaste automatically, and she hurriedly schooled her expression as the door was yanked open. 

“Hi,” Pearl looked down to meet the eyes of the short purple haired girl who answered. 

“WHAT?” The other girl shouted, pointing at her ear and Pearl sighed, only just restraining herself from face palming. 

“Could you turn your music down please?” Pearl raised her voice and mimicked twisting a dial.   
“WHAT?”

“TURN. MUSIC. DOWN. PLEASE.” Pearl yelled. 

“OH! SORRY!” The girl turned to re-enter the flat, gesturing for Pearl to follow. 

“MY FLATMATE JUST WON A BOXING TOURNAMENT SO WE’RE CELEBRATING, SORRY IT’S SO LATE.” Well that explained the weights lying around on the corridor floor. “WE FIGURED EVERYONE ELSE WOULD HAVE GONE HOME FOR VACATION.”

Any other time Pearl would’ve probably felt guilty and assured this other girl that it was quite alright, but right now _that_ song was playing and she was consumed with the intense desire to smash their stereo with one of those large weights. Instead she merely nodded, tight-lipped, as the purple haired girl pushed open the door to the kitchen and the noise was unbelievably even louder. Pearl felt like the volume was physically assaulting her body. 

The tall black girl in the kitchen seemed to have no such worries, yelling along with it as she punched the bag hanging from a stand in the room. Well that explained all the thudding. 

“I’m too hot!” Even in this cacophony of cheap stereo noise Pearl could tell the other girl was actually a pretty good singer, though her accent was strange, posh. “Hot damn! Call the …hey! what did you turn it off for?” The singer trailed off and turned to her friend as (thankfully) the music ceased. She looked more than a little embarrassed when she realised her flatmate wasn’t alone. 

“Garnet, this is Pearl. Pearl, this is Garnet, oh, and in Amethyst! Sorry. Guess I kinda forgot to introduce myself!” Amethyst grinned widely at Pearl as if they were already friends. 

“Uh, hey.” Garnet began. “Is there a problem?” 

“It is two in the morning. You are my problem.” Pearl said slowly from between gritted teeth, and Pearl saw the other girl just…freeze. Like she’d seen a ghost. 

“What?” She demanded, the tattoo on her wrist itching was really annoying her now and she pulled up her sleeve to scratch it better, only to stop in shock herself. 

The plain black had turned into alternating colours of a vivid red and equally striking mid-blue. The tattoo was complete. 

Pearl looked up to see Garnet staring at her palms. 

Oh.


	2. Chapter 2

“Oh no,” she heard Garnet mumble. 

“Wait.” Amethyst looked between the two. “Is she the other one?” 

The other one? Amethyst twisted back to look at her flatmate and Pearl caught a glimpse of blue and red writing on her collarbone. 

Oh no. 

Pearl felt her heart sink and turned to exit the flat. Fast. She made it halfway down the first flight of stairs before the bitter tears started to push their way out. 

“Pearl, wait!” She heard a deep female voice behind her and ran faster. Her foot twisted as she tried to sprint down the final flight of steps, and she was powerless to do anything other than let herself tumble to the bottom in an undignified heap, sighing at herself internally. 

Everything hurt. 

“Pearl, are you okay?” This couldn’t get any more worse. The girl, Garnet, from upstairs was rushing to her. 

“I’m fine,” Pearl pulled herself to her feet and hobbled to the door of her flat, brushing Garnet’s concerns off whilst trying to hide her mortification, and reaching in her pocket for her keys. 

Her keys. 

Surely not?

With a sense of growing horror she checked her empty pocket again, before craning to look through her flat door window. There her keys were, still in her bedroom door. Apparently it could get worse. Pearl groaned. 

“Are you in pain?”

“No! Well, yes, but I’ve locked myself out.” Pearl huffed and to her embarrassment she started crying again. Garnet stood there, looking very unsure of what to do and more than a little afraid. Pearl forced her body to the stairs and sat down, taking slow deep breaths until eventually her chest stopped shaking and she could calm her breathing. The two stayed in their positions, Pearl on the stairs and Garnet stood by the wall opposite, without making a sound for what seemed like an eternity. The tall girl stood, looking down intensely and unwaveringly at her hands, which afforded Pearl the chance to stare at her supposed soulmate without getting caught. 

There was no denying she was beautiful, with her athletic body and sharp cheekbones. She also seemed really nice, considering she was willing to rush out of her flat in the middle of the night to talk to a girl who’d been nothing but rude to her. Pearl felt guilt pool on her stomach. Talk about a bad first impression. 

“It just wasn’t supposed to be like this.” She said eventually, breaking the brittle silence. Garnet looked up but said nothing, so Pearl continued, locking eyes with the other girl. 

“Ever since I was a kid I’ve had all these scenarios planned for meeting my soulmate, I’ve always imagined how I’d fall in love at first sight with them. We’d maybe have seen each other round before but never spoken. Or they’d be a barista at my coffee shop. I alwayss thought it would be romantic.”

“Bit cliché,” the other girl offered. Clearly she was more than a little angry at how tonight was going, at how Pearl had made her night go, and Pearl couldn’t blame her. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ruin your celebrations,” Pearl offered the verbal olive branch and was rewarded with Garnet’s eyes softening slightly as she came to sit beside her. This close, Pearl noticed that though one of Garnet’s eyes was brown, the other was a shade of blue identical to the ink on Pearl’s wrist. 

“I just wanted a cute story, I wanted the epic love at first sight my parents had. And instead I got a soulmate who already has a soulmate. And you got me screaming at you and ruining your night.” 

“One of my moms has a friend with two soul mates, like me. She’s the one who finally helped me accept that I have more than one myself.” Garnet held out her palms. This close she could see “hey roomie” in a large diagonal scrawl across one. On the other palm “it’s two in the morning!” was written neatly, in a pale blue that glimmered in the moonlight. Pearl recognised the small, tightly spaced style as her own handwriting. 

“I’m sorry,” Pearl repeated. 

“These tattoos made most of my life hell. Even when I met Amethyst and thankfully she was cool with it, I’ve spent most of my life dreading this night because I knew most people would have a reaction like yours. Or worse. My tattoos were always changing. I never had the same one stay for more than a year until they settled down when I was about sixteen. I felt like the universe was trying to find me a soulmate but I wasn’t right for anyone.”

“Amethyst seems cool,” Pearl tried. 

“She’s fun, brings me out my shell and she doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks about her. She’s a great friend.” Garnet nodded. 

“Friend?”

“Yeah, A’s not really into romance, so we’re kind of mostly platonic. I don’t wanna lie to you we do, err…” Garnet’s eyes suddenly became very fixated on her hands again “whatever. Just because we’re soul mates doesn’t mean we have to date. We could be platonic, romantic, you know. Whatever. We should talk about it some time.” 

“Well…I did just lock my self out of my flat, so I guess I have time to come hang with you and Amethyst.” Pearl smiled. 

“Great! I’ve actually forgotten my keys though, with rushing out after you, so we’ll have to knock for-“

“Hey G! We cool now?”

“Amethyst! Please say you brought your keys.”

“…oops.”

They huddled together on the freezing stairwell for warmth. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep Pearl had ever had, to put it mildly, but she couldn't bring herself somehow to call it the worst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rest of what's written and completed so far. I do have a bit set later in the same au that was just meant to be an epilogue but it's nearly 1000 words now and still not done, so if I can do it stand I like it when I've finished editing it I'll add it as a third and final chapter (:


	3. Chapter 3

**Six months later**

Amethyst was getting the drinks, which left Garnet and Pearl on the packed dancefloor together. Pearl laughed as the taller girl clumsily twirled her, pulling her back into an embrace to shield her from the large group of people forcing their way through the crowd. Things had a tendency to get rougher towards the end of the night when people were drunk and it was busy. Pearl had no desire to be pushed over or have a drink thrown over her again, so she appreciated her friends protectiveness. It was really hard not to think about how nice those arms felt around her though, and the scent of her perfume filled the air. She could almost feel the other girl’s heartbeat…Pearl felt her face heat up and stepped away once the shoving had stopped.

The problem was when she turned back round Pearl couldn’t tear her eyes away from her soulmate as Garnet started giggling. It was just so unlike her. Even after knowing Garnet for six months, the boxer was full of little mysteries. Every now and then she’d come out with a random fact about something, or show off her singing voice when normally she stubbornly hid it from them, or just generally break from her normal quiet stoicism like this. Pearl glanced at the tiny scar across Garnet’s cheekbone. Another mystery. It was probably unreasonable to find it hot. Especially when she was trying so hard not to find anything about Garnet hot. 

If Garnet found out…Pearl didn’t think she could handle rejection from her soulmate. Especially when her soulmate was an athlete with an incredible body and a smile that literally made Pearl’s heart ache, and her closest friend. 

“I’m just gonna check on Amethyst,” Garnet staggered as she leaned over to shout in Pearl’s ear over the pounding bass. Red strobe lighting rolled around the club and even though it was uncomfortably hot Pearl shivered at the closeness of her soulmate’s lips as they hovered near her ear. Garnet was always more physically affectionate when she was drunk, little gestures that made Pearl’s heart beat just a little faster, but were no doubt intended entirely innocently. Playing with Pearl’s hair, holding her hand, even just standing closer and talking deeper than she normally did to Pearl just made everything feel more intimate. Pearl stopped herself scratching her wrist. 

Pearl motioned to the toilets and made her escape. The drop in volume as the door swung shut behind her added to the relief. The bathroom was empty for once – most people had already gone home. Pearl stood in front of the long mirror by the sinks and dabbed at her face with a wipe, wishing she wasn’t wearing makeup so she could just splash her face with cold water. She needed a distraction, she’d come in here to cool down and ended up staring at her soulmate tattoo, pressing the letters on her wrist to her mouth absentmindedly. She closed her eyes to force herself to stop looking at the red and blue tattoo, but only found herself visualising Garnet’s brown and blue eyes instead. 

“Y’ know I can feel it when you do that,” Garnet slurred the sentence slightly, but even drunk her accent was unmistakeable. 

“Garnet! I thought you were with Amethyst!” Pearl jumped and span round. 

“Nah. Barman wouldn’ serve me,” Garnet frowned. “And Amethyst went home with Perry ‘nyway so s’just us.”

“Oh?” Pearl said uncertainly, wishing she’d had more to drink, but not willing to let her guard down for fear of the secrets her tongue would reveal if loosened by alcohol. 

“Clubs closing soon ‘nyway” Garnet leaned on the sink and attempted to look nonchalant. 

“Are you ok?” Pearl asked. Her soulmate was looking very unsteady on her feet. 

“Haven’ drunk this much in a while.” Garnet admitted with a half grin “you look really pretty tonight, have I told you tha’?” 

Pearl flushed and Garnet started laughing again, making Pearl even more flustered. 

“Sorry,” Garnet added when her soulmate recovered enough to cross her arms and glare. “You’re too cute to be angry… it’s jus’ not scary, at all.”

“I’m not cute!” Pearl tried to fight the heat blooming across her face. The familiar vocals of the opening to uptown funk were muffled through the wall, as were the delighted screams of a couple hundred drunk students yelling about ‘their song’. Garnet’s eyes lit up as she recognised it. 

“You so are. ‘member the night we met? You were pure rage.” 

“Oh god.” Pearl groaned as she put her face in her hands, embarrassed but also amused by the memory, which had thankfully become more amusing in hindsight. “We all fell asleep on the stairwell and I snored.” 

“Nah, Amethyst stayed up all night, too scared you’d kill the pair of us ‘n our sleep.” Garnet laughed again. Pearl wanted to map the sound to her brain. It wasn’t that Garnet was sullen, just quiet. To hear her laugh so much in so little time was a rare gift, and Pearl was definitely treasuring it. 

“Was I that bad?” 

Garnet hummed, pretending to consider it. 

“…Yeah. But you got cooler thanks to me.”

“You? Amethyst would disagree. She likes to think that’s her influence.” Pearl teased. 

“Amethyst’s wrong. I’m cooler.” Garnet said, smirking. 

“Prove it then soulmate.” Pearl challenged, relaxing a little as they fell into familiar banter. 

“Can’ do that while we’re in here. We should be out dancing.” Garnet made to step away from the sink then quickly reconsidered as her world lurched, retreating to cling to her cold ceramic life raft once more. 

“I should be out dancing. You’re spending the night with your head on a toilet rim. What was it you said at predrinks again?” Pearl grinned smugly. After several embarrassing incidents, the tables had finally turned and she was determined to enjoy her moment. 

“I don’ recall,” Garnet said, in a tone of voice that indicated she very much did recall. 

“You said,” Pearl put on her best Garnet impression “Pearl. Don’t drink too much or you’ll be sick like last time. I’ll take the penalty drinks for you.” it was a terrible Garnet impression. 

“Shuddup,” Garnet mumbled. God only knew what Amethyst put in those drinks but she’d been seeing everything through a blur filter since. 

“Make me,” Yet again Pearl batted the ball back into her court. Garnet wondered if the other girl knew what she was doing with all these challenges. 

She closed her eyes and listened to the music. Their song was over now, she cursed internally, but she was drunk enough to throw caution to the wind anyway. 

Garnet tugged her soulmate in for a kiss. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t her best performance considering her head was spinning. After a heart stopping moment, she thought Pearl actually kissed her back, but it was all too brief and then Pearl was stepping back. 

Garnet opened her eyes to a very upset looking Pearl, which left her with a brief window to pretend this was just a joke, but before she could come up with a lame excuse the other girl spoke first.

“I-Garnet, you’re drunk. No no no it’s okay! please don’t cry!” 

“But ’m not crying?” Garnet said, puzzled. Then turned to the mirror and realised she was indeed crying. “Oh. Sorry P. ’S fine. M'drunk, I was jus’ kidding.” 

“Garnet. I’m not saying no,” The other girl grabbed an excessive amount of hand towels from the dispenser and handed the entire wad to her. “Just not right now. You taste like a brewery.” Pearl flushed. 

“Can we go home?” Garnet said, feeling very deflated. 

“Of course.”

“And talk ‘bout this tomorrow?”

“You probably won’t even remember this in the morning.” Pearl sang, as she offered Garnet the opportunity to sling an arm round her for support and the two staggered to the door.

“Can I stop at yours? Perry’s probably still at my flat.” Garnet said as they fell into the taxi. 

“Of course you’re stopping at mine. If you choke to death on your own vomit no one will be around to stop me and Amethyst strangling each other to death and then I’ll have to grow up and be the mature one.” Pearl shuddered at the thought.


End file.
